Welcome to the Lower School at Hazlegrove! Through the curriculum, the children in Years 3 and 4 enjoy endless opportunities with plenty of scope for imagination as well as building resilience. Minds are unlocked, and doors are opened as the children progress along their educational journey and voyage of self-discovery, through to Middle School and beyond.
Education in Years 3 and 4
The nurturing environment fostered within the Lower School is centred around the belief that children learn best when they feel safe, happy, and confident. As children enter the Prep School aged 7, days are busy and varied, covering a broad and balanced curriculum. Lessons are engaging and stimulating.
Academic rigour is crucial, underpinning all elements of the Lower School curriculum, and children are closely monitored to ensure that all flourish, but not at the expense of the enjoyment of learning, or our school values, our cornerstones on which our ethos and endeavours are built.
Our Classrooms
Children make use of the expansive wider school facilities and specialist teaching in Science, French, Art, DT, Music, Drama, Computing, PE, Games and Outdoor Education. The children might find themselves discovering dragon eggs in our very own woods (we’re lucky the dragons keep coming back to lay, but we’re not sure which species they are!) and delving into dragon myths from around the world, then creating fantastical artwork, linking to their English non-chronological report writing. Or they are delving into the mysteries of Ancient Egypt, developing their understanding of instructional texts through the process of mumification (have you ever seen what happens to a mummified tomato?) before recreating living models of the River Nile and learning about rivers around the world in Geography.
...children are closely monitored to ensure that all flourish, but not at the expense of the enjoyment of learning, or our school values...
Our Specialist Teachers and Lessons
In both Year 3 and Year 4, lessons first thing in the morning are spent with the form tutor building solid foundations in Maths and English. Our passionate form tutors continue to support individual learning through Humanities, P.S.H.E and Wellbeing lessons. At this age, the children are taught in tutor groups which are parallel, mixed ability classes; Maths and spelling are the only lessons which are set at this age.
On a Monday, Year 3 could find themselves exploring ‘health related fitness’ in PE, linking to their Science ‘health and nutrition topic’ (it’s amazing the range of facial expressions a pair of tights being turned into food filled small intestines can invoke), then using their understanding of data handling from Maths to create a technology-based, informative presentation to a range of clients based up on their specific needs. On another day, children might be taking their parents on a tour of the Hazlegrove virtual Viking museum in the playground, designing and making games to show off their understanding of magnetism to share with younger pupils in the Pre-Prep, then later, taking an active role in a Philosophy4Children enquiry debating the difficulties of accidentally discovering an invisibility ring – If you know you won’t be caught, should you do whatever you like?
Through a creative cross-curricular approach, children are encouraged to see links between subjects and develop tools to join the dots between their skills, knowledge and understanding both between subjects and beyond, into their extra-curricular activities and personal development whilst appreciating the relevance of their experiences to the wider world. We aim to develop creative, curious, confident learners who are open-minded and caring.
